Round 13 – Monza
Introduction
Hello! My name is Kat, and I’m a creative writing student at the University of Maine at Farmington. This blog is going to be dedicated to reviewing the results of the current Formula One season. I’ll also do my best to provide opinions when and where I can. Formula One is a racing series that runs from early March until early December every year. They race all around the world, and while they do have three races in the United States (Texas, Las Vegas, and Miami), most of the races take place across the pond. There are twenty two drivers and eleven teams currently racing.
Before getting into the results of last weekend, I figured it’d probably help to recap the season so far. This season started in late February with pre-season testing, but the season itself didn’t really get underway until early March (March 7 was the first race of the 2026 season). There had been speculation all throughout the offseason about who was going to hit the ground running; the general consensus was Mercedes or maybe McLaren. McLaren did not hit the ground running. They just sort of hit the ground, but so did Red Bull, so they’re not suffering alone. (Red Bull’s best results this season have been two second place finishes, both courtesy of Max Verstappen.)
Mercedes, however, did hit the ground running. George Russell won in Australia and then proceeded to not win anything again until the Austrian Grand Prix in late June. His 20 year old teammate is currently running away with the championship, though, so it’s fine. If Kimi Antonelli wins the World Driver’s Championship this season, he’ll be the youngest to win it in Formula One history. (The current youngest is Sebastian Vettel, who won his first championship at 23 years and 134 days old in 2010. And for those of you asking “Kat, do the days really matter?” Yes they do; Lewis Hamilton also won his first championship at 23, but he won it at 23 years and 300 days old.) Kimi currently has the most wins this season with seven. George and McLaren’s Lando Norris are tied for the second most wins with two each. Both Ferrari drivers—Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc—have one win each, and no one else has any wins.
Qualifying – Saturday, September 5
I assumed that either George or Lando would be on pole at the end of the day. As much as I keep hoping for Max to pull off a miracle, he doesn’t have the car this season to get pole and stay there. And Kimi wasn’t going to get pole even if he qualified there. He had a 30 place grid penalty to serve for changing his power unit, so he’d be starting in nineteenth. Qualifying was mostly uneventful. Liam Lawson was giving Max Verstappen tows for pretty much all of Q1 and Q2, but unfortunately he was eliminated in Q2 after qualifying fourteenth. He also took a penalty for a power unit change, so he started at the back of the grid with Kimi. Oscar Piastri impeded him during a lap and got a three place penalty for it, so his third place start became a sixth place start after qualifying was over. He still did the interviews, though. Liam, oddly enough, apparently blamed Red Bull for not qualifying higher. I don’t know why. Maybe he misses his own car; he’s been filling in for Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar after Isack had a wrist injury during the summer break but normally he drives for Racing Bulls, which is totally not the Red Bull junior team. (It’s the sister team, which is basically the same thing. Red Bull, interestingly enough, is the only team with a sister team.)
The shock of the day was Pierre Gasly, in an Alpine, getting pole for the first time in his nine years in Formula One. It was really impressive on Pierre’s end, but even more impressive because Alpine is, generally, a midfield team that barely ever sees the podium. I think their last podium was in 2023, because their Monaco third place trophy was returned to Isack right before the Monza weekend after a dispute about penalties that lasted pretty much three months.
Going into Sunday, the top five were as follows: Pierre, George, Charles, Lewis, and Max. With Kimi starting way back in nineteenth, I was predicting a George or Lando win.
Race Day – Sunday, September 6
The Ferraris had an incident right away; Charles pushed Lewis wide enough that Lewis went off track a little. Charles, in my opinion, had more than enough space on the other side of him, so why he decided to drive so close to Lewis is a mystery that will probably never get solved. There was no contact, though, so the race continued as normal. And then Charles crashed badly enough to bring out a red flag, so the race stopped until the car could be moved and the track could be swept. Charles had luckily crashed into the barriers off track and was out of the car on his own and moving, but it was still scary to watch. When the race restarted, there were two formation laps, because Yuki Tsunoda was out of his grid box a little (he’d gone to the wrong one) so they had to do another formation lap to correct it. I always get so stressed during the race start, and having an extra formation lap did nothing to help, especially because Charles had crashed and I was now worried about someone else crashing. Thankfully no one else crashed. Oscar and Lewis spent pretty much the whole race trading fourth and fifth place, though.
Max led the race for a little bit. He led for longer than I was expecting him to; I almost started wondering if we’d get a Max win. Unfortunately that was not to be; George took it back from him after a few laps of fighting. Lance Stroll had engine issues towards the end of the race, which caused a virtual safety car. VSCs (virtual saftey cars) mean two things: 1) everyone has to go slower and 2) free pit stops. Because Formula One is such a high speed sport, normally you lose about 20 seconds during a pit stop, most of which is just coming into and leaving the pit lane. But because everyone’s going slow under the VSC, you can pit and lose less time. Kimi and Max both pit under the VSC.
The end of the race was probably one of the most exciting we’ve had in a while. George had stayed out during the VSC, which meant that his tires were older and had more degradation compared to Kimi’s, and Kimi was very quickly catching George. They had a very stressful fight for P1 including a moment where Kimi went off track that I thought would impede him more. It didn’t. He took the lead from George with three laps left of the race and became the first Italian driver to win his home race since 1966. George finished second and Max finished third.
World Driver’s Championship (WDC) standings: Kimi in first with 267 points, George in second with 201 points, and Lewis in third with 191 points.
World Constructor’s Championship (WCC) standings: Mercedes in first with 468 points, Ferrari in second with 346 points, and McLaren in third with 287.
Next week’s race will be in Madrid, at the Madring. I’m pretty sure this is the first time they’ve raced at this track, so I’m looking forward to it.
Qualifying predictions: Kimi pole
Race predictions: Kimi win
My predictions will probably be the same every single week; unless something happens to Kimi during quali or the race, I always assume he’s going to win these days.
